Category Archives: Humor

Puerto Rican Fish Pun

GM is a college student studying communications. She is Puerto Rican and grew up in Miami. Both of her parents lived in Puerto Rico before moving to the United States and passed on Puerto Rican culture to her and her siblings.

Context: This joke was told over the dining room table while eating lunch. GM said when she was younger her grandmother told her this joke.

Transcript:

GM: This is one my family tells also:

Fish 1: ¿Qué hace tu papá para el trabajo?

Fish 2: Nada

GM: So “nada” in Spanish means nothing but it also means swim. I’m not sure if other Islands or Latin countries use “nada” for swim because it depends, but in Puerto Rico you can honestly just tell by the context of the sentence or conversation. That’s what makes it so funny; The second fish’s answer could go either way.

Thoughts/Analysis: This pun uses double meaning in words and is largely a children’s joke. Different Latin cultures use different words for things, and seeing as jokes are a significant part of cultural life and this is one example of its significance in Puerto Rican life. It is similar to English/American puns, in which homonyms are used.

Puerto Rican Sock Pun

GM is a college student studying communications. She is Puerto Rican and grew up in Miami. Both of her parents lived in Puerto Rico before moving to the United States and passed on Puerto Rican culture to her and her siblings.

Context: This joke was told over the dining room table while eating lunch. The informants family tells this one.

Transcript:

GM: There are so many Puerto Rican jokes.

Collector: Tell me one.

GM: There was one we [her and her family] were saying on FaceTime the other day. My grandma tells this one.

GM:
There is this Puerto Rican guy who goes into a store, and he is trying to talk to his lady and get some clothes. He doesn’t speak english. so he’s like
¿Tienes cosas que pones debajo de los zapatos?
Lady: “Huh?”
So they keep going back and forth and then the lady is like “socks?”
Hombre: “ah, eso si ques!”
Lady: “God damn it! if you could spell it this whole time, why didn’t you do it the first time?”

Translation:

There is this Puerto Rican guy who goes into a store, and he is trying to talk to his lady and get some clothes. He doesn’t speak english. so he’s like
Do you have those things you put under your shoes?
Lady: “Huh?”
So they keep going back and forth and then the lady is like, “socks?”
Hombre: “Oh yes those!”
Lady: “God damn it! if you could spell it this whole time, why didn’t you do it the first time?”

GM: I love this joke but it only works in Spanish, because “eso si ques” sounds a lot like s-o-c-k-s. I love being bilingual because I am included in this type of joke.

Thoughts/analysis: This joke is one of many that blends two languages to make a fun pun. When GM recited the joke I genuinely thought it was funny because I can understand both English and Spanish. If someone who did not understand any Spanish was told this joke, they likely would not understand it because “s-o-c-k-s” would have been the first thing they heard. Seeing as joking is a huge part of cultural life, this joke and other Spanglish puns show how linguisticly diverse a culture is.

Bringing home a wolf (humorous proverb)

Main Piece:

JK (50s, american-polish, father): “It’s like buying a wolf and then freaking out when it attacks your kids!”

Background:

The informant is my dad remarking over the phone in response to me explaining how I was upset about not being able to finish working on a multitude of projects outside of school. When asked about where he heard the phrase, he pointed to Catholic school and the sort of lamb/wolf proverbs that he was exposed to there. He also claimed it to have similarity to the saying “bringing a knife to a gunfight.”

Context:

The phrase was said in an effort to make me laugh and bring light to the worry I’d been expressing (and it did get me to do so). It’s as if to say “well, what were you expecting to happen?”

Thoughts:

The proverb itself is innately very dark in nature, and yet hits that sort of shock humor coupled with a simple realization. The idea of having your children eaten is a terrible concept, but the ignorance/gullibility of the person who would do such is. An added factor to the proverb is the in the word choice of “buying” said wolf. There is a certain action in paying for the beast that ends up screwing you over, which bolsters and reveals the main lesson of the saying. It asks the recipient of said advice to be more pragmatically present in the day to day; to not hyperextend their own capabilities.

Internet Slang: “Based”

Main Piece:

The informant, SE, and I were discussing a fight that broke out at a concert.

Me: “…and then she spat in her face.”

SE: “After it was broken up?”

Me: “No, while they were hitting each other.”

SE: “Honestly based.”

Background:

The informant is a twenty-one year old, white, college student who is very active on online platforms like reddit and twitter. He originally picked it up from his friend, an indian-american college student, and then SE passed it on to our friend group. The phrase is all over online blog posting, comment threads, and in colloquial vernacular.

Context:

“Based” as a word is practically synonymous with “good” or “cool.” But the performance and inflection of how it’s used can greatly change the meaning behind it. The use of the word “based” itself has become a bit of a meme, and thus, it has taken on a post-ironic, humorous quality as well.

Thoughts:

In the example above, SE said it very sharply with an overly genuine tone. Here, what he’s really implying is saying that the action of the girl was the OPPOSITE of “good” or “cool” and is calling it such ironically to get a laugh. Calling something “based” is a more niche way to describe something as being good, and although it isn’t said as much as words like “sick” or “dope,” it holds a very specific purpose which makes it popular in our friend group’s humor.

Reference:

Just a quick google search and you will find it in memes like the following.

Just a head – Storytelling Joke

Main Piece:

TB told this fictional story that her dad used to tell at parties.

“There was this young couple that was deeply in love and they got married, and they bought a home together and they were so excited to start their family… and they gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, um, but the only thing was, was that he was just a head. He had no body, no arms, legs- whatever, he was literally just a head. And they- when he was born they were like, ‘We’re so excited to have a child, we still love him but like, he’s just gonna have such a hard life, like… I don’t know if we are prepared. He’s gonna be bullied, he’s just gonna have such a hard time.’

And surprisingly, as soon as he went to school, he did super well. He made a ton of friends, he was like the most popular guy in school. He was super talented, he’s smart, he makes good grades, he has a ton of girlfriends. He’s an athlete, somehow, perhaps playing the ball. And so then one day, these doctors that have been following this kid his whole life, because he’s like a phenomenon- an anomaly…

They’re checking on him and they said, ‘We think we finally found your son a body. And he can just live and exist as a normal human boy with arms and legs.’ And so the parents like sob, they’re like, ‘We never knew this would be possible, like, this is a dream.’ He’s turning eighteen years old, he can start his life as an adult with a body.

The parents are so excited to tell him, and so on his eighteenth birthday, he’s in his room on his bed, just sitting on his pillow. They come into his room and are like, ‘Son. Happy Birthday. We want you to know we have a really exciting surprise for you, and we have a really good gift for you’ and they’re like crying, repeating, ‘we just have something great.’

And he looks up at them. And he says, ‘not another fucking hat.'”

Background:

The informant had heard this joke told by her dad to her and has heard it with many different middle sections but always with the same setup. There are parents with a boy who is born as just a head, they learn of the body, and then the punchline is him being frustrated with all the other gifts he’s gotten given his unique condition. Her dad would then fill the in between with story, as long as possible, so that when it hits the reversal at the end, it comes even more out of nowhere.

Context:

This story joke was told by Gilbert Godfrey, someone who TB’s dad would watch often and took that joke and made it his own.

Thoughts:

Hearing of the different iterations that this story joke has gone through before it got to me was almost part of the humor. I knew going into it that she was going to be vamping to lead up to some sort of punchline, but in spite of that was still caught off guard by the finish. The story touches on a universal struggle of parents forcing a certain gift on to you based on how they perceive your interests, but taken to a physical extreme. The structure of it also seems to borrow from folk tales that establish a twisted status quo, subvert it with a “but one day” moment that introduces a new opportunity/challenge, and then spins that structure on its head by hitting you with an abrupt stop to the story instead of reaching the stereotypical fairytale ending.